1. art and entertainment
2. radio

TPC-8
TESLA AGAINST MARCONI
The Dispute for the Radio Patent Paternity
Paul Brenner, M.Sc., Senior Member, IEEE, Member WREN, Israeli Representative in the World
Renewable Energy Council
Abstract: The goal of this paper is to present the
multilateral personality of the greatest inventor in
history, Nikola Tesla and the claims against
Guglielmo Marconi for the radio patent paternity.
Index Terms: Tesla (T.), Marconi (M.), coherer,
magnifying transformer, LW (long wave), SW
(short wave), MW (medium wave).
I. INTRODUCTION:
A genius is born - Nikola Tesla [1]
Fig. 1.Nikola Tesla at
the age of 23.
(Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Nikola Tesla (Fig.1) saw
the daylight for the first
time in his life in Smiljan,
a small village in Croatia,
in the Lika region, on July
10, 1856. His father, Rev.
Milutin Tesla was a priest
in the Serbian Orthodox
Church Metropolitanate
of. Sremski Karlovci and
his mother, Ana Kalinić,
a very talented home craft
tools producer, never
learned to read, although
she was able to recall from memory entire epopees.
After the school in Gospić, where he finished a 4 year
term in only 3, T. started in 1875 to learn electrical
engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz.
Despite the affirmations of some sources, there are no
precise indications if he received his Baccalaureate
degrees from the university at Graz, since this
university declared that he did not receive any title
and did not continue his study after the first semester
of the third year [1]. In December 1878 he left Graz,
breaking also all relationships with his family. Some
friends thought that he had drowned in Mura. What is
known is that T.was employed for a year as assistant
engineer in Maribor, Slovenia, where he suffered a
nervous breakdown. Persuaded by his father to
continue his studies, he attended the CharlesFerdinand University in Prague in 1880, where he
received the strong influence of Ernst Mach.
However, he did not finish his study and left the
university after the death of his father, completing a
term of only 1 year. But he was genial, even without
an academic title. Tesla was an autodidact. He started
to read many works, memorizing whole books.
Specialists supposed that T. had a photographic
memory. In his autobiography he tells that many
times he experienced detailed moments of inspiration.
Since his childhood, T. was stricked by halucinations
accompanied frequently by blinding flashes of light.
Much of the effects of this peculiar affliction were
related to a word or an idea; the simple hearing of the
name of an item was able to induce its detailed
envisioning in Tesla's mind. Most of his inventions
would have been apriori visualized in detail in his
mind.(picture thinking). This perfect photographic
memory was perhaps a hereditary inheritance from
his mother, possessing, as said, a natural gift in
remembering entire epic poems - who knows?
Hungary and France
After moving to Budapest in 1881 he started to work
in Tivadar Puskás's Hungarian National Telephone
Company. There, he worked with Nebojša Petrović, a
young inventor from Austria, on a project using twin
turbines to create continual power. On the opening of
the telephone exchange in Budapest, 1881, Tesla
became the chief electrician of the company, and
later, the engineer for the country's first telephone
system. He also deviced a telephone repeater or
amplifier, but according to others, the first
loudspeaker. In 1882 he moved to Paris, attending the
Continental Edison Company, where he was charged
with the designing of improvements for electric
equipments. In the same year, Tesla built the
induction motor and improved a range of applications
using rotating magnetic fields for which he received
patents in 1888. After the death of his mother, in
April 1882. he fell ill. Recuperation followed in
Gospić and Tomingaj, his mother's birthplace.
United States
Tesla arrived in New York on 06.06.1884 with a
recommendation letter from Charles Batchelor, his
former manager, to Thomas Alva Edison, in which
was stipulated textually: "I know two great men: you
are one of them; the other is this young man". Tesla
got the task to redisign Edison company's DC motors
and generators. He claimed later that he was offered
US$50,000 (~ US$1.1 million in 2007, adjusted for
inflation) for this task. Tesla gave the Edison
company several efficient new patents, but as he
asked in 1885 about the payment, Edison replied:
"Tesla, you don't understand our American humor"
and refused to pay. T. resigned after a new refuse of
Edison to raise his weekly salary from 18 USD to 25.
After a period of digging ditches for the Edison
company, T. formed his own company, Tesla Electric
Light & Manufacturing. The initial investors
disagreed with T's plan for alternating current and he
was forced again to work as a common worker a year
to feed himself and to subventionate his next project.
In 1887, he invented the brushless alternating current
motor, presented to the AIEE (now IEEE) in 1888.
In the same year, he started to develop his Tesla coil
and began working with George Westinghouse at
Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company.
In April of 1887, Tesla began investigating the Xrays, with his own single node vacuum tubes, a device
without target electrode. Tesla was aware about the
damages of these rays on the skin, but considered that
the ozone and the nitrous acide are merely responsible
and not the radiation itself. He made photos of his
hand bones before Roentgen and sent them later to
Roentgen, without commenting his discovery. T. was
sure that these waves are longitudinal waves,
produced in force-free magnetic fields, like in plasma,
a fact confirmed also by others.
. This concept was demonstrated in 1891 (see fig.2).
Unfortunately, much of these early researches of T.
were lost in the 5th Avenue laboratory fire in March
1895. T.proposed later, in 1904, a "world system" in
which energy could be transmitted wireless through
various media, starting from a high-power ultraviolet
beam forming a vertical ionized channel directly
above the transmitter-receiver stations. The same
concept was applied in further inventions of T., like
the virtual lighting rods, the electrolaser electroshock
weapon, being proposed for disabling war vehicles.
II. WIRELESS ENERGY TRANSMISSION – THE
FIRST 100 YEARS' LANDMARKS [2]
1864 – James Clerk Maxwell – the mathematical
model of electromagnetic radiation
1888 – Heinrich Hertz – the apparatus for generating
electromagnetic waves – by many considered as the
first radio transmitter.
1894 – Jagdish Chandra Bose ignited gunpower and
rang a bell with electromagnetic waves.
1895 – Jagdish Chandra Bose succeeded to transmit
electromagnetic signals at a distance of approx. one
mile.
1897 – Nikola Tesla (the real inventor of the radio,
inventor of microwaves and alternating current)
patented his first inventions in the field of wireless
energy transmission using for experiments his
Colorado Springs tower.
1900 – Gulielmo Marconi failed to patent his radio
invention . The patent office remarks: "Marconi's
pretended ignorance of the nature of a "Tesla
oscillator" being little short of absurd..."
1901 – Gulielmo Marconi sends and receives signals
over the Atlantic. Replying to one of his
collaborators, engineer Otis Pond, Tesla answers:
"Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is
using seventeen of my patents."
1904 – at the St. Louis World Fair, a prize was
offered for operating an aeromodel having a motor of
0.1 HP from a distance of 100 ft.
1926 – Shintaro Uda and Hidetsugu Yagi published
their first article concerning the future Yagi antenna.
1964 – CBS News presented a reality program in
which William C. Brown (former technical director of
JPL Raytheon) and Walter Cronkite demonstrated the
operation of a microwave-powered model helicopter,
supplied from a microwave beam.
Starting with the 1975 Goldstone Deep Space
Communications Experiments a large range of
researches, using powerful microwave devices and
lasers are now currently performed.
III. TESLA IN COLORADO SPRINGS [1, 2, 4, 5]
Fig.2. Tesla demonstrating his theory about
the wireless transmission of energy waves
in 1891[Courtesy of Wikipedia]
About a year before his lecture on wireless energy
transmission (1891) T. arrived to the conviction that
rarefied air can be a suitable conductor and therefore
he went to Colorado Springs to build a transmission
station in this part of the Rockies. Leonard E. Curtis,
a friend,, found land and provided power for the
research from the El Paso Power Company of
Colorado Springs and Colonel John Jacob Astor
contributed with 30,000 US$ to the construction.
Nobody knew exactly what Tesla intended to perform
in this laboratory (fig.2) erected on the highest
mountain of the Southern Rockies– the Pikes Peak –
he generally informed the press that he wants to
transmit a signal from the Pikes Peak to Paris.
result.
A third approach of T. was in the field of the
ionosphere. T. anticipated correctly that this high
stratus of the atmosphere may be highly ionized and
therefore highly conductive. He started to think about
a device able to transmit electrical energy from the
Earth's surface to this high altitude. During this study,
he received a repeating signal through his transmitter.
He considered – and despite his ridiculization at his
time for this announcement - today we may think too
that Tesla was perhaps the first person on Earth
receiving a cosmic radio signal.
Fig.3. Tesla's Pikes Peak experimental station near
Colorado Springs [Courtesy of PBS][
What was experimented in this experimental station is
still not clear. In Colorado, with its strong storms, T.
performed measurements and soon came to the idea
that the earth is a relatively good conductor. He
emitted the hypothesis that man could transmit strong
impulses to any location on Earth practically without
losses. To confirm his theory he constructed a new
laboratory in Colorado Springs that would be able to
produce the strong impulses that will be conducted to
the earth. This new laboratory has a rolled back roof
to prevent it from sparks and a wooden tower 80 ft
high. On its top was placed a 142 ft metal mast that
supported a large copper sphere. Inside the wooden
tower was placed a huge Tesla coil. In an experiment
of one second, the secondary coil produced wonderful
electric sparks and a blue corolla. T. ordered to repeat
the experiment without a time limit. Huge 100 ft long
man-made lightning bolts were produced from the
metal mast to the earth. The play came to an end with
the burning of the power plant's generators. Since this
event, T. received no more free electricity for his
experiments from the El Paso Power Plant. The
experiments in Colorado Spring lasted 9 months.
Though T. wrote all the experiments in his diary, a
question remains still not elucidated: did T. transmit
powerful energy waves at Pikes Peak? Some reports
conclude that several vacuum tubes planted in the soil
in a certain distance from his laboratory were
alighted, but this fact can be attributed to the specific
high conductivity of this soil [1].
Another approach of T. was on the resonance
frequency of the atmosphere between the earth's
surface and the ionosphere. T. calculated that this
may be about 8 Hz, a result which was verified in the
50's by other researchers that reached the same
Fig. 4. The magnifying transformer at work in
Colorado Springs[Courtesy of Wikipedia][1]
IV. THE LECTURES OF TESLA AND HIS
PREDICTIONS [1, 2, 4, 5, 6]
Hertz had demonstrated the existence of
electromagnetic waves in 1887 using as source of
high frequency oscillations the sparks produced by
discharges of condensers [6]. In his experiments,
Tesla needed high frequency power on a vast scale
and at very high voltages. In 1891 Tesla developed an
AC generator with 384 poles and an output frequency
of 10,000 Hz and soon he invented other generators
even at higher frequencies, up to 25,000 Hz. In his
study of increasing frequency and voltages, he started
with the invention of such giant rotating machines,
but finally he came to the conclusion that they are
unable to produce the necessary effects and switched
to other alternatives. Tesla was all the time convinced
that undamped current generation is very important, a
method which at his time was still inapplicable and
will be introduced only after 1910. His early models
utilizing the induction principle with stationary coils
formed the equipment used for the large commercial
machines built afterwards for radio communications.
In his experiments Tesla used tuned circuits,
reduction coils and oscillatory spark circuits, which,
combined with an oscillation transformer create
spectacular arc discharges. He exposed his theory in
some famous lectures. The first of them was in 1892,
before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
in New York, the second, also in 1892, before the
Institution for electrical Engineers and the Royal
Institution in London, the Societe Internationale
Francaise des Electriciens and the Societe Francaise
de Physique in Paris and the third in 1893 before the
Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the National
Electric Light Association in St. Louis. In these
lectures, Tesla included also references on the
structure of matter. In 1893 he also had an extensive
exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair. A couple of years
before, he explained how metals and dielectric
materials could be heated using high frequency coils.
He also described the effect of high frequency on the
human body (diathermy). He produced vacuum tubes
and introduced them in high frequency fields. In this
way, he became the father of the neon tube and of the
fluorescent lamp. He predicted the use of cheap
synchronous electrical clocks. Such clocks were
presented at the World's Fair in 1893. Tesla claimed
that the future of aviation – than still inexistent,
except the balloons - depended on the use of
aluminum. Aluminum was a scarce and expensive
material at this time and only the development of
electricity contributed essentially to its price
reduction. Tesla described in his early lectures and
patents devices that became important many years
later. For example, rotary sparks gaps and series spark
gaps with small spacings predicted by T. in 1892-93
became a main issue in the wireless telegraphy from
1909 to 1920. In February 1892, Sir William Crookes
published a prediction concerning the possibility of
electromagnetic waves to be used for
communications. Tesla has the idea to disturb the
electrostatic field of the Earth using standing waves
by excitation of its entire surface with high frequency
power and than taking off power anywhere. Tesla
described in his lecture in 1893 large antennas
connected to the ground by wires for both purposes –
transmission and reception and emphasizes the
importance of applying the electrical resonance
principle to these schemes, using even variable
tuning. In 1896 Tesla succeeded to transmit
electromagnetic signals to a boat on the Hudson
River. About 1900, talking about the radio, he
declared: "I have no doubt that it will prove very
efficient in enlightening the masses, particularly in
still uncivilized countries and less accessible regions,
and that it will add materially to general safety
comfort and convenience, and maintenance of
peaceful plants, all of which are capable of
transmitting individualized signals to the uttermost
confines of the earth. Each of them will be preferably
located near some important center of civilization and
the news that it receives through any channel will be
flashed to all points of the globe. A cheap and simple
device, which might be carried in one's pocket, may
then be set up somewhere on sea or land, and will
record the world's news or such special messages as
may be intended for it." Since 1893, Tesla put as basic
objective for himself a worldwide range of grandiose
electrical effects, many of his priory invented patents
were left for others to make from them less ambitious,
but more practical applications. A few other
researchers, inspired by his experiments and
revelations, like Marconi, used his published patents
for their own profit. [1].
V. TESLA – FATHER OF THE AC SYSTEM[1,16]
We remember that as a young scientist Tesla had to
compete with the then universally recognized "Father
of the DC electricity", Edison. The AC system
invented by Tesla was much more effective than the
DC system proposed by Edison. The facility to
transport electrical energy at long distances was the
main reason which determined the abandon of DC
networks in favor of Tesla's AC network. The Tesla
system was adopted for the first time at the Niagara
Falls power plant, which was put in service in 1895.
The first recorded assets for economical use of the
Niagara Falls waters are dated 1759 (the Daniel
Joncairs sawmill's channel). The Niagara Hydraulic
Power & Manufacturing Company was founded in
1853. In 1875, the water turbines in the new erected
powerhouse began to turn, but electrical power was
produced commercially here only starting from 1879,
since Schoellkopf introduced electrical technology to
his powerhouse turbines. This was the start of one of
the first power stations in the world. Illuminating the
spectacular falls was a desiderate of many sponsors.
In 1860, this occurred using expensive calcium flares,
but in 1881, Charles Brush installed electric carbon
arc lights, supplied by a small DC generator. In 1904
a new power plant, featuring 34,000 HP was built. In
1918, Schoellkopf's Hydraulic Power Company
merged with the Edward Dean Adams' Niagara Falls
Power Company. In 1886, Thomas Evershed
proposed a project of 200,000 HP electricity
generation at Niagara Falls, but this plan was demised
due to the impossibility to distribute DC power at
long distances. The Niagara Falls Power Company
offered a 100,000 US$ award for anyone who could
invent a system able to transmit electricity long
distance. No one responded to this offer, because
nobody was able to oppose to Edison, except Tesla.
The greatest scientific minds of the world met in
London to discuss the solutions. Against the advice of
Thomas Edison and William Kelvin, Tesla's
alternating current system was selected as the
standard to be utilized. George Westinghouse started
to develop Tesla's system. In 1883, Westinghouse
replaced the illumination system of the Falls with AC
technology. Ten years later, on May 6th, 1893, the
Cataract Construction Company, a subsidiary founded
in 1889 of the Niagara Falls Power Company, headed
by the world's greatest financiers (J.P. Morgan, John
Astor, William Vanderbilt and Edward Dean Adams),
decided to use in its works in the Niagara Falls region
alternating current (AC) for power generation and
transmission. A new era in the history of electricity
began. The AC system – today extended in the entire
world – is one of the major inventions in
electroenergetics, and all this - thanks to Tesla.
VI. FROM COLORADO SPRINGS BACK TO NEW
YORK [1] .
Back to New York, Tesla wrote an enthousiastic
paper for the "Century Magazine", where he describes
in a futuristic view means to capture the Sun's
radiation energy, to control the weather using
electricity, predicts machines that would make wars
impossible, and exposes his theory on the worldwide
wireless energy transmission, as a global network that
would link power stations, telecommunication, radio
and even transmit images at remote locations. One of
the most powerful magnats of this time, J.P. Morgan,
offered to Tesla a capital of 150,000 US$ to build a
transmission tower and a power plant, but the sum
was too small to cover all the expenses. An offer of
1,000,000 US$ would be more reasonable for this
goal. T. accepted this sum and started the construction
works. Unfortunately, the history was cruel with this
project. After tangled construction phases, due to lack
of funds, in 1917 the Marines dynamited it by order
of the USA Government, to avoid German spies' use.
VII. TESLA – FATHER OF ROBOTICS [1].
Arrived in New York from Colorado Springs, Tesla
tried to shock the assistance in his presentations. For
example, a short time after his arrival, in 1898, he
presented in the Madison Square Garden arena in
New York, in an electrical exhibition, the world's first
radio controlled vessel model. This is the first attempt
to build automatic robots. Tesla Patent Nr. 613,809
describes the first device having a wireless remote
control. The working model, the teleautomaton was
controlled with radio signals and powered with an
internal battery. On the device were mounted some
small lamps by means of which – by switching them
wireless on and off from the remote controller, Tesla
responded to some easy mathematical questions of the
assistance. Being questionned by a reporter about the
possibility to use wireless controlled robotics in war
missions, like explosive charges' bearing machines,
T.replyed: "You do not see there a wireless torpedo,
you see there the first of a race of robots, mechanical
men which will do the laborious work of the human
race."
in detail, is shown in Fig. 8 [Fig.5 – P.B.][3]. In this
case an alternator energizes the primary of a
transformer, the high tension secondary of which is
connected to the ground and an elevated capacity and
tuned to the imprest oscillations. The receiving circuit
consists of an inductance connected to the ground
and to an elevated terminal without break and is
resonantly responsive to the transmitted oscillations.
Fig. 5. Tesla's System of Wireless
Transmission Thru the Earth as Actually
Exposed In His Lectures Before the Franklin
Institute and Electric Light Association in
February and March, 1893 [3]
I gave to the world a wireless system of potentialities
far beyond anything before conceived. I made
explicit and repeated statements that I contemplated
transmission, absolutely unlimited as to terrestrial
distance and amount of energy. But, altho I have
overcome all obstacles which seemed in the
beginning unsurmountable and found elegant
solutions of all the problems which confronted me,
yet, even at this very day, the majority of experts are
still blind to the possibilities which are within easy
attainment. My confidence that a signal could be
easily flashed around the globe was strengthened thru
the discovery of the "rotating brush," a wonderful
phenomenon which I have fully described in my
address before the Institution of Electrical Engineers,
London, in 1892… This is undoubtedly the most
delicate wireless detector known, but for a long time
it was hard to produce and to maintain in the
sensitive state. These difficulties do not exist now and
I am looking to valuable applications of this device,
particularly in connection with the high-speed
photographic method, which I suggested, in wireless,
as well as in wire, transmission"[3].
IX.NOBEL PRIZE CONTROVERSIES [1].
VIII. TESLA – FATHER OF WIRELESS [1,2,3,5,6]
In a paper entitled "The True Wireless"[3], published
in the Electrical Experimenter in May 1919, Tesla
explains his patent concerning wireless transmission
of energy using earth's electric resonance in a more
popular language: The arrangement, as I described it
Thomas Edison and Tesla were proposed as
potential laureates to share the Nobel Prize of 1915 in
a press dispatch, but finally due to their reciprocal
animosity, the prize was not given to them., despite
their enormous scientific contributions. In the
following events after the rumors, neither Tesla nor
Edison won the prize (although Edison did receive
one of 38 possible bids in 1915, and Tesla did receive
one bid out of 38 in 1937). Earlier, rumors circulated
that Tesla was have been nominated for the Nobel
Prize of 1912, for his experiments with tuned circuits
using high-voltage high-frequency resonant
transformers. In 1915, Tesla filed an unsuccessful
lawsuit against Marconi.
X. TESLA'S AWARDS [1].
For his multilateral groundwork in theoretical
electrotechnics and for his prodigious inventor's and
teacher's activity Tesla was awarded with some of the
highest titles and prizes a scientist and an engineer
can dream about during his life – except the Nobel
Prize, that he virtually might have received instead of
Marconi if in 1909 the Nobel Commission would had
been correct. Tesla received the Elliott Cresson Gold
Medal in 1893, the Edison Medal in 1916 and the
John Scott Medal in 1934.
XI. THE RIVAL APPEARS [10, 12, 13, 14, 15]
Fig.6. Guglielmo
Marconi, [Courtesy of
INVENTORS ] [10]
Guglielmo Marconi
(fig.6) was born on
April 25,.1874 in
Bologna, Italy. His
father was a rich Italian
landowner and his
mother, a granddaughter of the founder of the
Jameson whiskey
distillery. Marconi
learned in Bologna in
the lab of Augusto
Righi, in Florence at the
Istituto Cavallero, and,
finally in Livorno. First
experiments were
performed at home, in
December 1894
. After sending LW signals at a distance of 1 mile in
1895, he went to England and founded the Marconi
Company at Chelmsford, Essex in 1897. His first
patent in wireless telegraphy, Nr. 12039, was received
on June 2, 1896, followed in July by experiments
from the General Post Office building in London in a
distance of 1.5 miles. On September 2, 1896 the span
had increased to 8 miles with tests at Salisbury plain
and then, on 11.05.1897, across the Bristol Channel
(3.5 miles). Daily Express, in July 1898 was the first
newspaper using radiotelegraph. Another device was
installed at the board of Queen Victoria's Royal
yacht. The extension of the new invention was really
rapid. In December 1898 wireless telegraphy was
installed between East Goodwin light ship and the
South Foreland lighthouse and on March 3, 1899,
wireless communication was employed to save life.
In summer 1899 the Marconi's wireless signals
crossed the English Channel and on November 15,
1899 the first ocean wireless transmissions linked
ships. On April 26, 1900, M. received his patent Nr.
7777 for "Tuned Syntonic Telegraphy", an invention
that used tuned circuits, enabling a wireless set to be
tuned to specific emitting station (like a radio receiver
today). On January 23, 1901 the first long distance
(196 miles) wireless transmission was performed
from the Isle of Wight to The Lizzard in Cornwall.
The next task was to transmit over the Atlantic and
this was realized on Thursday the 12th of December
1901.The letter "S" transmitted from Poldhu,
Cornwall, was – according to Marconi and his
assistant, Georges Piget - received at Signal Hill, St.
Johns, Newfoundland. In a span of a few decades,
radio transmissions changed the world and brought
nations closer to each other. In 1909, Marconi shared
the Nobel Prize with Karl Ferdinand Braun, from
which he "borrowed" some parts of his work (like
Braun's British patent on tuning), as he will recognize
later. Guglielmo Marconi used also the patents of
others, as we will see in the next chapter.. Marconi's
1901 tests were contested by scientists (Edison and
others), motivating that M.receives only parasite
signals from the atmosphere. Dr. Jack Belrose
estimated that the Poldhu transmitter has a frequency
of 850 Hz and what Marconi received were only SW,
emitted by the ionosphere. Fearing to be challenged
by concurrents, M. conducted new tests over the
ocean, this time using a ship. These tests gave
coherer-tape reception up to 2,496 km (1,551 mi), and
audio reception up to 3,378 km (2,099 mi) during the
night and half of these results during daytime, i.e. that
Marconi's mid-day Atlantic wireless first crossing in
1901 with LW and MW was seemingly not real. An
1902 unsuccessful test from Glacier Bay confirmed
this supposition. In 1903, President Theodore
Roosevelt greeted wireless King Edward VII to HM
birthday [ I still must look for the way - directly or by
intermediary ship-stations (?)]. The two Marconi's
company radio operators on the "Titanic" rescued
survivors by their SOS signals.. In 1915 the
Chelmsford Marconi factory, using a vacuum tube
transmitter, organized the first entertainment radio
broadcast and in 1922 such transmissions became
regular (from the Marconi Research Centre at
Writtle). Marconi. reached the Italian Senate in 1914
and was made a marchese in 1924 by King Victor
Emmanuel III. In 1923 he had adhered to the fascist
party of Benito Mussolini, which made him in 1930
President of the Accademia d'Italia. Later he was
appointed a Member of the Fascist Grand Council.
Marconi died in Rome in 1937 at the age of 63, after
a series of heart attacks. All the radio stations in the
world kept silence for two minutes. After state
funerals his remains were deposed in his house, Villa
Griffone, Sasso Marconi, Emilia-Romagna.
XI. A LATE RECOGNITION[2, 9, 12, 13, 17]
Marconi's work is based on copies of patents of many
other inventors without their permission. His socalled original "two-circuit" device, a spark-gap
transmitter plus a coherer-receiver, was similar to
those used by Oliver Lodge in a series of worldwide
reported tests in 1894. Tesla disputed that Marconi
was able to signal for greater distances than anyone
else when using the spark-gap and coherer
combination. In 1900 Alexander Stepanovich Popov
declared to the Congress of Russian Electrical
Engineers: "[...] the emission and reception of signals
by Marconi by means of electric oscillations [was]
nothing new. In America, the famous engineer Nikola
Tesla carried the same experiments in 1893." The
Fascist regime in Italy credited Marconi as inventor
of the radio. The doubt is if his own contribution was
sufficient to constitute an independent patent, or if
his component devices were too similar to the original
ones (if not copies) developed years before by Hertz,
Popov, Branly, Tesla, and Lodge – and in this case,
they are copies. Marconi's "four-circuit" design,
having two tuned-circuits at the transmitting and
receiver antennas, British Patent Nr.7777 from 26
April 1900 is a compound of the earlier work of Tesla
and other inventors. 5of 9 judges of the Supreme
Court stated that Marconi's work had been anticipated
by John Stone Stone (patent No.714,756) and Oliver
Lodge (patent No. 609,154). The Supreme Court also
studied Tesla's patent No. 645,576 and noted that
Tesla had used four tuned circuits before Marconi.
In order to defend himself, in 1911 Marconi
purchased through his company the Lodge-Muirhead
Syndicate, whose main performance was Oliver
Lodge's tuning patent, invented in 1897. Thus, the
7777 Patent was vividly discussed at this time from
validation to complete rejection. In 1943, the US
Supreme Court stated that: "The Tesla patent No.
645,576, applied for September 2, 1897 and allowed
March 20, 1900, disclosed a four-circuit system,
having two circuits each at transmitter and receiver,
and recommended that all four circuits be tuned to
the same frequency. [... He] recognized that his
apparatus could, without change, be used for wireless
communication, which is dependent upon the
transmission of electrical energy." In its decision, the
court noted: "Marconi's reputation as the man who
first achieved successful radio transmission rests on
his original patent, which became reissue No. 11,913,
and which is not here [320 U.S. 1, 38] in question.
That reputation, however well-deserved, does not
entitle him to a patent for every later improvement
which he claims in the radio field. Patent cases, like
others, must be decided not by weighing the
reputations of the litigants, but by careful study of the
merits of their respective contentions and proofs".
The court also stated that: "It is well established that
as between two inventors priority of invention will be
awarded to the one who by satisfying proof can show
that he first conceived of the invention." Following
to this decision, most of Marconi's patents were
Fig. 7. Tesla's System of transmission of electrical
energy, Patent No. 645,576, patented Mar. 20,
1900 [5]
overturned by the US Supreme Court. A decision that
a)
b)
Fig. 8. Marconi's British Patent No.12039
from 1900 – the so called "4 circuits patent":
a) - emitter diagram, b) – receiver diagram
[Courtesy of Sparkmuseum][9]
came unfortunately 9 months after Tesla's death.and
which was pronounced not mainly in order to do
simply justice. At the time, the US Army and
Marconi's company were involved in a trial on the
radio patent rights, and in order to anullate Tesla's
former claims for compensation, the Court nullified
Marconi's other inventions. The priority of Tesla's
US Patent No.645, 576 on the Marconi's US Patent
No.763,772 is more evident if we use the following
suggestive comparative timeline diagram, published
in the Internet (Fig.9) [1]
Fig. 9. Comparative timeline diagram illustrating
the priority of Tesla's Patent No.645,576 on
Marconi's radio patent [Courtesy of Wikipedia][1]
Tesla was not alone in claiming against Marconi.
Oliver Lodge claimed the usage of his unpatented
ideas in Marconi's first radio patent. Don Kimberlin
comments: "…What did happen by April 1900 was
that Marconi uniquely had combined Professor
Righi's transmitter, Branly's coherer, Tesla's elevated
antenna and Lodge's tuned circuits to realize what
ultimately became first wireless telegraphy…"[18].
In order to compare the patents, please see the figures
(Fig.5, 7, 8a and b). From these drawings results that
the use of resonant circuits was clearly primordially
demonstrated (1893) and filed (1898) by Tesla, the
Marconi patent was only afterwards "adjusted".
Marconi's invention is only an application of Tesla's
(and of others') prior researches and studies. The
differences consist in the used media – in Tesla's
patent it was the Earth, in Marconi's patent it is the
air. In Tesla's patent, a high frequency polyphasic
alternator provides the HF initial impulses, whereas in
Marconi's feature, the impulses are produced by
switching on-off manually the telegraph's switch. The
differences are not in the principle, but in the
application's purpose. Tesla – as discussed – wanted
to create his planned worldwide wireless system,
whereas Marconi – using the wireless transmission
knowledge and technology previously set by Tesla
and others – performed an apparatus for common
use– the radiotelegraph - and fructified the results.
XII. CONCLUSION
Tesla was the first to invent the radio. Marconi did
not really invent the radio, he only combined, copied
and adapted patents of Tesla and others and
commercialized them as his own patent. He died in a
plenty of glory and richess, whereas Tesla died as a
poor man. No comments…
XIII. REFERENCE
[1] Wikipedia – Nikola Tesla
[2] Wikipedia – Wireless energy transfer
[3] Nikola Tesla – The True Wireless, Electrical
Experimenter, May 1919, Wikipedia
[4] Nikola Tesla – Colorado Springs Notes, Nolit,
Beograd, 1978
[5] Leland Anderson - Work with Alternating
Currents and TheirAplication to Wireless Telegraphy,
Telephony and Transmission of Power, Apendix B,
United States Patents Office - Nikola Tesla, System
of transmission of electrical energy, No. 645,576,
patented 20.03.1900, Sun Publishing, Denver, 1992.
[6] Charles A. Jost – The Tesla Experiment, Lightning
and Earth electrical resonance – A Commentary on
1983 Research and Test Results, Millbrae, CA, 1983.
[7] Catalogue of Tesla's patents, Beograd, 1987.
[8] Margaret Cheney - Tesla: Man Out of Time, New
York: Dorset Press, 1981
[9] Sparkmuseum, Internet.
[10] Inventors, Rockradio, UK, Internet.
[11] PBS, Internet.
[12] Joe Craig, VO1NA - Marconi's First
Transatlantic Wireless Experiment, Marconi Radio
Club of Newfoundland
[13] A. David Wunsch - Misreading the Supreme
Court: A Puzzling Chapter in the History of Radio,
Internet, Antenna, Newsletter of the Mercurians, in
the Society for the History of Technology
[14] Barry Mishkind - This is the Marconi Archive
Section of The Broadcast Archive, Internet.
[15] Helen Briggs - Profile: Marconi, the wireless
pioneer, BBC Sci-Tech, Internet
[16] Niagara Falls – History of Power, Internet
[17] Leland Anderson – Priority in the invention of
the radio, Tesla vs. Marconi
[18] Don Kimberlin - Jurassic Telecommunications,
Part II, - The Global Influences Leading Up To
Marconi's "Lucky 7's" Patent, The Jurassic Radio
Section of the Broadcasting Archive, maintained by
Barry Mishkind, Internet.
--------------Paul Brenner , M.Sc.,finished his studies at the Bucharest
Polytechnic Institute in 1970 and worked in the field of
energy balances' achievement (and, as well, also in other
projects), all of them for large industrial platforms and for
the coal mining industry, until his emigration to Israel in
1982. In parallel with his actual daily activity in the Israel
Electric Corporation in Haifa, Israel, he is a permanent
member of the World Renewable Energy Network and
Council and participates regularly in WREC/ WREN
congresses. Author of more than 30 papers, presentations
and a course of energy balances' achievement, he sustained
together with Christopher Dunn, an USA laser engineer,
the known author of the bestseller The Giza Power Plant Technologies from Ancient Egypt a workshop in
Aberdeen, UK, in May 2005, in the pre-congress days of
WREC 2005 Europe, entitled Hi-Tech Antiquity. E-mail
addresses: [email protected] and [email protected]